Whenever a pastor mentions submission (or whenever I do when I'm speaking) everybody cringes. Not just the women. Everybody. It's not a pretty word in our culture.

But I think it's been misunderstood. I've written about this before, and probably the most thoroughly in To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Today I was listening to James Dobson talk about in-law relationships, and he said something interesting regarding a women whose husband was not supporting her against his interfering mother. He said (and I'm paraphrasing) that submission shouldn't involve standing up for your rights. But it has to involve standing up for your relationship. When the relationship is at stake, you have to say something.

That's been my message, too, though I worded it slightly differently. I put it like this: if you allow someone to treat you with disrespect, you're encouraging them to act in an unChristlike manner. We have to encourage others to treat us well, and that means that we do not become total pushovers in our marriages! That doesn't help anything.

I talked about this in regards to kids on my blog tour for To Love, Honor and Vacuum last year. Here's one post from My Crazy Life that details it the most:

Why do you say that many moms serve their kids and their husbands in the wrong way? Isn't serving supposed to be good?!?

Of course serving is good! But some of us can forget that Jesus taught us not just to serve, but to serve in a certain way. When Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, Peter flipped out. He wasn’t upset because he was getting his feet washed; lots of people had presumably washed his feet in his lifetime. It was because Jesus was doing it. Jesus was doing something lowly, but He wasn’t lowly Himself. And that made people sit up and take notice.

In the same way, I think, we are going to do lowly things. We’ll wash dirty underwear and clean up after kids puke. But we aren’t lowly. What’s the difference? I show in To Love, Honor and Vacuum that a maid does things for you without you even noticing. A proper servant serves in such a way as to point you to Jesus. If your son walks in the door and drops his coat on the floor and his backpack on the couch and then goes and plays a video game, and you pick up his stuff, you’ve taught him to treat you with disrespect. You’ve taught him to act in an unChristlike manner. And that’s just plain wrong. That’s not Christian serving.

Similarly, if our 15-year-olds don’t know how to prepare a meal, because we are always making gourmet things for everybody, we’re not properly preparing them to leave the nest. Serving doesn’t mean we do everything for people. Serving means we act in such a way as to help them look more and more like Jesus everyday. Ironically, that may mean sometimes that we don’t clean and don’t cook and don’t tidy. That may be someone Else's job. And it’s serving them to let them do it! So put your feet up, get out that chocolate, and supervise as your kids clean the bathroom. You’re doing them a favor!

Read the rest here. Or visit my main website to read all the posts from that To Love, Honor and Vacuum blog tour!

About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.